At the very moment when state and national Democratic leadership should be harnessing youthful energy for a more just world, they appear clueless. If Democrats want to win the next election as the guardians and saviors of democracy, they have a lot of work to do. Unfettered participation in free and fair elections, followed by respect for election results and peaceful transfer of power is the minimum conditions for democracies. However, democracy includes much more. Healthy democracies don’t shortchange some folks, privilege others, shut down dissent, or support killing innocent civilians anywhere in the world. These essential features are missing in the United States. Even these basics are at risk. Democrats need to vigorously fight for the fullest democracy to be its believable defenders. They urgently need to do so now!
Failure to fully address inequity and support for unjust wars abroad made me critical of the Democratic Party for my entire adult life, beginning with their support for the Vietnam War. The lie-supported 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution enabled Lyndon B. Johnson to wage an undeclared war–opposed only by two Democratic senators–contributed to my early political awareness. I was ineligible to vote in 1968 at eighteen, so I avoided the choice between two war supporters, Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. The political inflection point for my children's generation was the pretense of weapons of mass that facilitated the Iraq war. Today it is the ruse that opposition to Zionism and Israel's war on Palestinians is equivalent to attacking Jews. Support for each successive unwarranted war eroded public confidence in Democrats and voting, strengthened Republicans, and bolstered conservative ideology.
I yearn for a progressive, third-party alternative but recognize that to be viable it needs to emerge from robust, widespread local organizing, not in the midst of presidential elections. As a result, I have almost always marked my ballots for Democrats because I despise Republicans more. I am angrier and more depressed than ever about my available choices. Now, I am both desperate for Democrats to win in November and terrified they will not. I am finding the lesser-of-two-evils case harder to make every day. It’s a terrible choice, but there is it, now more so than ever. Alarmingly, the Democratic leadership appears willfully clueless about the change in course they need to make to win the confidence of a significant chunk of voters who seem ready to stay home on election day or vote for an alternate candidate with no chance of defeating Trump. No hyperbole! We face an existential political moment.
Republicans brazenly attempt to restrict ballot access, control state-level election apparatus, gerrymander election district boundaries in their favor, and deny Trump’s loss and attempt at insurrection. The GOP does not want democracy. Republicans do not challenge Trump when he praises autocrats like Modi, Orban, Xe, and Putin and their ability to get their way without regard for the will of voters. Democracy has become a dispensable inconvenience for the GOP.
Democrats rightfully call out Republican threats to democracy. But what about the glaring contradictions? President Biden and many of his Democratic allies defend Israel as a democracy amongst autocracies in the face of their decades-long denial of Palestinian's democratic and human rights. The United States, across multiple Democratic and Republican administrations, maintains alliances with Saudi Arabia and India despite blatant gross violations of norms of democracy. These alliances and defense of Israel's genocidal war on innocent Palestinians violate Democrats' credibility as defenders of democracy. Ensuring the right to free speech and dissent is at the core of democracy, yet many Democrats support the suppression of peaceful campus protests, as well as the firing of professors and expulsion of students for political action on behalf of Palestinians. House Democrats voted to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism to shut down dissent. Instead of heeding mass protests on college campuses, many Democrats choose to use deplorable but relatively isolated incidents of real antisemitism to characterize a growing movement that, if anything demonstrates mutual respect and solidarity between Jews and Palestinians. The blatant contradictions become more and more striking as the atrocities of Israel's war on Gaza drag on with U.S. military support–especially to large numbers of Black, Palestinian, young, and even many Jewish voters who Democrats urgently need to defeat Trump and his sycophantic anti-democratic allies in close state and federal elections.
However, the affirmative case for democracy rests on more than basic voting access and respect for democratic rights, here and around the world. Voters value democracy when there is compelling evidence that it improves their day-to-day lives. The rate of inflation may have waned, but far too many American voters continue to experience day-to-day insecurity in a constant struggle to make ends meet. The gut feeling in answer to, “Who’s on my side?” looms far larger for Democrats than their repetition of favorable economic statistics, steps toward green infrastructure, and rightful condemnation of egregious GOP policies and behavior concerning Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Talk about making it easier to enter the middle class doesn't help because it doesn't challenge the idea that the poverty from which to climb is a given.
Democrats’ credibility as the defenders of democracy turns on unwaveringly standing on the side of working people when meeting their needs is contested by the wealthy. Too often, Democrats–especially at the state level, fall short on this front.
For example, in her 2024 budget proposal, New York Democratic governor Kathy Hochul failed to support robust tenant protections from unjust rent increases and evictions statewide, undermined existing rent stabilization, rejected substantial additional funding for public housing, and refused to tax the wealthy. Yet many would-be Democratic voters live with the precarity of a missed paycheck away from eviction or foreclosure. In Pennsylvania, Democratic governor Josh Shapiro supported siphoning funds from democratically-governed public schools for all students to vouchers for private–often discriminatory–private schools.
Grossly inflated home values cause property tax bills in U.S. cities and towns to rise faster than personal income. Yet nowhere do we see Democrats leading a call to fund schools through increased income, capital gains, or corporate taxes instead of regressive property taxes that fall the heaviest of people with fixed or limited income.
Across the country, Democrats have failed to fight for universal health care. As a result, people with and without health insurance struggle to navigate byzantine bureaucracies and pay high deductibles and co-pays. The resultant cynical perception is, “No politicians are on my side. A pox on all their houses.”
The result of all this is pervasive insecurity that undermines faith in democratic participation. Trump and his sycophantic allies have stepped into the breach left by too cautious or campaign contribution-influenced Democrats.
It is impossible to overstate the dangers of a Trump victory in November. We face an existential moment for human and democratic rights, for a sustainable climate, and most important, for our ability to organize for change. All of it is at risk.
My antidote for pessimism is massive numbers of Palestinians, Jews, Christians, atheists, Black and White, people of all gender identities, old and young joining together to demand justice in the Middle East and at home. It is thousands of New Yorkers going to Albany to demand housing justice for all. Democrats: support it. Don't suppress it. Stand for all working people.
Hope is what we need. Without hope, people don’t exercise their most basic democratic right to vote. Shout it from every corner. Democrats: Pay some damn attention! Give us hope. Give us something to vote for.
Arthur taught and led science professional learning and curriculum and assessment development projects for 50 yrs. He writes about education and social justice. He loves spending time with friends and family, hiking, and gardening.
Follow him:
Substack: https://arthurhcamins.substack.com/
X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/arthurcamins
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@caminsarthur